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Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

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Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#141

Post by JabavuAdams »

rayiner wrote: post #12

It's particularly interesting to look at the mobility statistics of asian americans (many of whom are also immigrants) as a category: http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/race... . If you look at table 1 on page 56, you can see that for white americans, the probability of a child ending up in the top quantile of income where a parent is in the bottom quantile of income is 11% (about half the probab…

Clearly white kids need more of the right kind of child abuse! Beating the snot out of your white kid because you're a drunk loser? No. Emotional abuse directed at producing a doctor/lawyer/engineer -- yessss! BrownDadLove (tm).

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#142

Post by acephal »

umutisik wrote: post #17
rayiner wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Adams said something similar, though he meant it in the opposite way: "I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestr…

Also Voltaire quote: “History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.”

Also Aristotle: you can't do philosophy without solving all the other necessities and knowledges (he meant math, etc) first.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#143

Post by acephal »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #45
dx87 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think of it as resiliance to adversity. If someone has had a comparatively easy life, they'll probably have a harder time dealing with difficult situations. The problem is that everything is relative, so people may not see their life as easy, even if it is compared to most people. For example, I used to work with someone who was raised by wealthy parents, went to super exclusive private schools, and had multiple co…

people just need to leave their comfort zone occasionally It would be nice if that happened, though. You tell your students, 75 % of whom have no grasp of 8th-grade math, that they have been cheated out of an education and that consequently they now need to work twice as hard. But instead of knuckling down they all march off to the Dean to complain. Of course the Dean enables the underperformance. You can't frame "ea…

Analytics driven education is the worst thing to happen to education.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#144

Post by babesh »

babesh wrote: post #129
JakeTheAndroid wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, we see people in fairly terrible countries not relocate. Why haven't 80% of all Mexican or Central American citizens relocated to the US? Or conversely, why haven't tons of the homeless in the US made their way to Mexico? If these countries are really significantly worse, and that is the only factor pushing normal people to relocate, then we should be seeing massive population movements all the time. Instead,…

Actually a significant percentage have. The US is 16.7% Hispanic. That is over 50 million people. The population of Mexico is a little over 120 million. I would bet that if there were no barriers to immigration then you would see a significantly higher Hispanic population in the US. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Hispanic_and...

And from the article, over 60% is of Mexican ancestry. So over 30 million versus the population of Mexico at a little over 120 million. Roughly 20% of Mexicans moved to the US.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#145

Post by btilly »

nostrademons wrote: post #64
maerF0x0 wrote: post #57

I often tell people to watch out for selection bias. Immigrants are a distinctly unique people. They're not just members of their foreign racial/national group, they're members of their foreign racial/national group with the ambitions/motivations to leave. To make the abstract concrete. Canadians living in the US are often thought to be "just like" Canadians living in Canada. But they're often not. Often they're the…

There's also significant selection bias on the entry side. U.S. immigration policies are heavily biased towards people with unique skills, high levels of education, and a fair amount of money in their home country, and biased against people who are likely to be a drain on public assistance. That means that most hyphenated-Americans have already passed two significant high-pass filters: they have to be willing to upro…

There's also significant selection bias on the entry side. U.S. immigration policies are heavily biased towards people with unique skills, high levels of education, and a fair amount of money in their home country, and biased against people who are likely to be a drain on public assistance.

Clearly not the cause.

The USA has accepted many waves of refugees. For example the Cambodian boat refugees. They arrived with no skills, no education, no money, and didn't even speak the language. There was every reason to believe that they would be a drain on public assistance. And yet the children of these groups also show much greater upwards mobility than children of people who were already here.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#146

Post by JabavuAdams »

acephal wrote: post #140
bsanr2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that many HNers will probably be embarrased to admit being surprised by is how higher education attainment rates for immigrants don't exclude African immigrants. In fact, black immigrants from Africa and the West Indies have among the highest degree attainment rate of any group. This belies the lower college-and-advanced-degree attainment rate for black Americans as a whole. All of this seems to suggest tha…

Black SWE here, grew up on the west side of Chicago, I don't think most white people understand how bad the literacy situation is. I could read competently before I even got to school and I went to grammar school in the 90s. First day of first grade, I found out no one could competently read a sentence. In fact, whole school (which has closed) was on this remedial education program called Advanced Directives or somet…

This. Systemic racism ... aaaand ... loser gangster culture. Would love to see the numbers on whether it's easier to become a chartered accountant or a rap artist.

I'm seeing the other side of this, recently (disadvantaged white people). It's astonishing the loser mentalities and habits that many disadvantaged children learn from their early caregivers and peer group. As middle to upper middle class people, we often have no idea how many little bits of knowledge we pick up to work the system (legally), from those around us.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#147

Post by acephal »

PaulHoule wrote: post #90

The "ain't no making it" attitude that has been historically attributed to poor blacks is increasingly popular among "native" whites.

Except they don't say "ain't no making it", they say "life is about the experiences not making money". I've heard 35-year olds say this.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#148

Post by heavyarms »

kazinator wrote: post #19

This is because people who immigrate are "artificially" pushed down in social status and income due to issues like differences in language, and not having some of your work or education experience recognized in the foreign country. These people are just "bouncing back". In some cases people who were professionals in their country of origin do relatively lower ranked or even menial work. Their children will be constan…

That was my first take as well. This is explicitly called out in the Conclusions section in paper.

"Furthermore, immigrant parents were “under-placed” in the income distribution, thus allowing their children who were native English speakers and educated in the US more scope for upward mobility."

I don't see numbers on how much of the total "upward mobility" can be attributed to any of the individual factors.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#149

Post by akamoonknight »

namirez wrote: post #83
nostrademons wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also significant selection bias on the entry side. U.S. immigration policies are heavily biased towards people with unique skills, high levels of education, and a fair amount of money in their home country, and biased against people who are likely to be a drain on public assistance. That means that most hyphenated-Americans have already passed two significant high-pass filters: they have to be willing to upro…

> There's also significant selection bias on the entry side. U.S. immigration policies are heavily biased towards people with unique skills, high levels of education, and a fair amount of money in their home country Categorically false! Most of immigration to the US is family based; actually about two-third of them. source: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/17/key-facts-a...

That brings up a slightly different aspect in my mind, that children of immigrants might be more than likely to be surrounded by large amounts of family members which probably tends to have a positive effect?

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#150

Post by majos »

blakesterz wrote: post #4

This reminds of a line from 30 Rock by Jack Donaghy: "Diversity is the engine that drives this country. We are an immigrant nation! The first generation works their fingers to the bone making things, the next generation goes to college and innovates new ideas, the third generation... snowboards and takes improv classes." Feels like one of those things that we all thought was true.

I learned about a similar concept in my high school world history class of all places. Except that was for nomadic traders in north Africa and the Arabian peninsula. The first generation could traipse endlessly across the desert and build a fortune. The second generation could maintain it. The third generation couldn't. The phrase was "losing the desert", though Googling indicates this isn't a common term after all.
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